What Makes a Maiden
by cakefaced
Summary: On the morning of her wedding, Eowyn reflects on her uncommonly compassionate betrothal to Faramir and on learning the new ways of timid Gondorian women, so different from the strength of the shield maidens of Rohan. Oneshot. Fluff! Not a lemon.


Disclaimer: Tolkien et al owns LOR, this is just for fun!

Summary: Eowyn reflects on her uniquely compassionate betrothal to Faramir and adjusts to the new ways of timid Gondorian women, compared to the strength of the shield maidens of Rohan on the morning of her wedding.

Eowyn stood before Faramir, her lord, Elessar, Her king, and Gondor, her new kingdom, on the day of her wedding, and was terrified.

She had been woken early that morning by a veritable gaggle of handmaidens who bathed, dressed, and fawned over her until she relented to their gentle clucking and flung herself into the tasks of femininity.

Eowyn was a study in all things foreign and strange to these women, and was determined to make herself as comfortable as possible in her new home, and with her new companions. These women were her strongest hope for overcoming the longings for familiar land and faces that were sure to come.

It was with such a resolution that Eowyn allowed, with some dismay, the women to flock about her, binding and adorning her body in the ways of Gondor, and of married women, two stretches of unfamiliar territory. Along with the heavier, more ornate fabrics and adornments, strips of cloth were wrapped around her torso to push her breasts upward, rather than to bind them, as she was accustomed to, and thicker bands of cloth, not unlike wide rope, were wrapped around her hips to make them more full, enhancing the appearance fertility.

The women of Gondor were nothing akin to the shield maidens of Rohan, and Eowyn struggled briefly between the desire to rebel, and the desire to subvert the gentle virgins of the stone city with swords and strength.

Eowyn found Faramir to be a good man, and did not regret her decision to marry, though she often wondered if her comfort with the love of this man was not simply a sign of age and reason. She wondered if her desire to wed Faramir was simply a practical choice; that she might marry a kind man, at least, for surely she must marry, and soon, as the world was being reformed and political bonds were being structured anew. Eowyn could swear to be no man's political tool until she was out of breath, but it would not change the powerful alliance implied by the marriage, and future children of the union.

This subject of said children was a favored topic that morning. It struck Eowyn that the day of a wedding was perhaps the only socially appropriate opportunity for unwed women to discuss such things so openly, and so she allowed her suppressed smiles to pass as timid apprehension, and kept to herself that she, at least, would not feel the painful loss of her maidenhood.

Eowyn dared not speak so openly, for the customs of Rohan were so alien to those of Gondor in many subjects considered most sacred and personal to both nations, and she feared misinterpretation and slander of the name she had not entered into. It was not that Eowyn had been touched by any man, for indeed, the women of Rohan were wise to many things, and just as many of them took it upon themselves to learn defense, they also knew to protect their bodies from burdens, or joys, for which they were unprepared. Indeed, Eowyn had not yet been kissed, save for the sweet affections of kin and handmaidens, and the chaste, yet promising kisses Faramir regularly pressed to her palm, or the inside of her wrist, when he felt supervision was lax.

Eowyn's own maidenhead was lacking not by the touch of a man, but for the nature of being Rohorrim, and spending much of her life on a horse. A hymen could never sustain such rough exercise, and so Eowyn's fear of the first night was significantly less than the handmaidens' where pain was concerned, though far greater at the prospect of explaining the lack of virginal tissue to her Gondorian husband.

Faramir knew Eowyn as well as a man and women of their stature could hope to know one another out of wedlock. Their time in the houses of healing had allowed them the luxury of conversation and companionship without the prelude or pretense of courtship. It was in this way, in an effort to alleviate boredom and assuage the restlessness of soldiers left behind, that Eowyn and Faramir came to befriend one another. Eowyn was determined to neither seek nor find the love of any man, and Faramir himself was consumed with grief and turmoil.

Love had snuck upon them, first appearing as the love between friends, then siblings, and allies. They became co-conspirators, devising elaborate schemes and plots for escape from the houses of healing that they might rejoin the fighting, or at least, the rebuilding of their countries. These plots, however ingeniously devised and intricately planned, were always set aside for the future, and each found rest, recuperation, and an anchor in the other.

As time found the pair progressively healthier and in better spirits, Faramir and Eowyn each noted internally some apprehension at parting ways, and losing the company and solace found in the their nearly daily talks rarely crossed into one another's personal lives, beyond that which pertained to immediate and appropriate grief, Faramir broached the subject of marriage three days before he was to be released from the houses. He had approached the topic in the same manner used between the two for plotting adventurous escapes or political coups, and certainly, the connections weren't lost on Eowyn.

The marriage seemed a reasonable request, and, facing peacetime, Eowyn knew that if she did not choose soon, it would not be long before representatives of hopeful political alliances were paraded before her, or worse, a husband was chosen without her participation or consent whatsoever. It was her fondness for Farimar that bolstered her confidence enough to delay an answer, and Faramir's understanding of Eowyn that made his own sureness swell, instead of falter, at her request for delay.

Both knew that this union was a shrewd political decision, and their rare friendship made one another ideal partners, for such familiarity preceding a marriage was nearly unheard of across both countries.

Eowyn and Faramir were each dedicated warriors, and shrewd tacticians, but they also shared a longing for peace and comfort, and they shared a need for love such that they had each been deprived by dead, broken, and strained families. Faramir's offer was a tremendously reasonable one, and Eowyn was a reasonable woman, despite her deepest urges to challenge convention, those too, were based in reason and efficiency.

Delaying her answer gave her an opportunity to tailor the offer of marriage to suit her present and future relationship with Faramir, and he took comfort and joy in her participation of the matter.

The day that Faramir left the houses of healing, Eowyn walked with him through the lush corridors of the gardens and explained to him her explicit demands and fears of and within a marriage. She approached the conversation with belligerence and no small amount of fear, and had confronted Faramir as though challenging him on the battlefield.

As Eowyn detailed her refusal of a cage, or the bonds of docility and wifely obligation, Faramir laughed out loud and, to the shock of Eowyn and the surrounding guards, clasped her by the waist and swung her about such as her elder brother had when she was a young girl. Eowyn had pulled away from shock, only to be reduced to laughter herself as Faramir flung himself against the nearest tree trunk to declare, in a swooning manner, that he could never hope to bind a creature as fierce or determined as she, and that he hoped only that she refrained from publicly surpassing his skills at riding and fighting too frequently.

And it was thus, with laughter and incredulity, that they pledged troth to one another. That dusk, as Faramir was being prepared to leave the houses of healing, he and Eowyn returned to the gardens and exchanged their first serious words regarding the marriage, and the feasibility of love, such as couples who did not marry for political gain strove to achieve.

Of course, no such thing was spoken aloud at the time as such, but the pair talked quietly of duty and the future, their voices softer and expressions more affectionate than before. And as Faramir departed both the gardens and Eowyn, he clasped her left hand to his breast for a moment, that she felt his heartbeat, and then pressed the first of countless kisses into the palm of her hand, now soft from rest and weeks without holding a blade.

And while the guards of that evening would deny seeing any such thing, Eowyn's fingertips curled around the edges of Faramir's trimmed beard and stroked the soft skin there for just a moment.

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A/N: Thanks for reading! Please leave a (gentle) review.

This is an old fic that I wrote almost a decade ago so I'm unlikely to expand on it.


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